Yahoo and Twitter Square Off Over Mobile Advertising

January 22, 2015 - 2 minutes read

Yahoo! Inc., having been a wild card in the mobile advertising industry for the past few years, is showing signs of emerging as a major player. Industry analysts, drawing on data generated by eMarketer, have noted that Yahoo!’s much-publicized “reload and relaunch” efforts are finally having the intended effect. Forecasts suggest that Yahoo! could command as much as 3.18 percent of the mobile ad market this year, with analysts projecting that number to rise to 3.74 percent in 2015 and 4.19 percent by 2016.

If those forecasts are accurate, Yahoo! will supplant Twitter as the world’s third-largest platform for mobile marketing sometime next year. Some onlookers even suggest that Yahoo! could eventually mount a threat to mobile marketing giants Google and Facebook.

Michael Berelian, the director of North American e-commerce at Geometry, said, “Yahoo! has an excellent opportunity to differentiate itself by leveraging its footprint to provide value to advertisers. If it is able to plug into the right channels and markets, it will be poised to compete with the market leader, Google, and Facebook, which is a close second.”

Between them, Google and Facebook currently command more than 50 percent of the global mobile advertising market. However, advertisers are increasingly looking to diversify their efforts across numerous platforms, a trend which is giving smaller players a new opportunity to compete. Yahoo! began to change its fortunes two years ago, when it lured former Google executive Marissa Mayer as its new president and CEO.

Software and iPad app development professionals will want to keep a close eye on where this goes in the years ahead. Yahoo! has made some intriguing investments by acquiring a growing number of mobile marketing companies, though it is yet to be seen just how well their efforts will pay off in the long run.

If analyst predictions prove correct, NYC mobile app developers and software developers around the world could be looking at a dramatically changed landscape. Given the nature of the tech industry, change is inevitable, and Google and Facebook are unlikely to rule forever.